


Gifts

by tedthedead



Category: Naruto
Genre: Adulthood, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Divorce, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Family, Family Feels, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Slice of Life, everyones sad but we're working on it, sad kids, sad parents, single parent Haruno Sakura
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 01:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 735
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27545839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tedthedead/pseuds/tedthedead
Summary: After years and years of lonely birthdays and holidays without Sasuke, Sakura and Sarada are at a breaking point. Families just can't take that strain, not without something having to change, or they will break instead.
Relationships: Haruno Sakura & Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura/Hatake Kakashi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Gifts

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying for a decent rewrite on this project because I think it's worth a whole overhaul now that I've developed some as a writer! I hope those who were interested in this the first time around find this and enjoy the changes.

God, the moon was just so goddamn big when you looked at it, with effervescent light that cascaded over everything in its path, making the world outside seems vaguely unreal, as if just on the other side of some filmy veil that might melt into a silver mist if you dared to touch it. Just looking out into that silvery moonlight and the thick, liquid shadows it cast across the ground could make a person feel so…tired.

Sakura felt so, so tired these days. Exhausting physical labor and mind-numbing tedium were all her days amounted to most of the time. Get up, get ready, make breakfast, make lunches, go to work, save someone’s life and force a dislocated hip back into place, stay late doing paperwork, somehow make it home before there were _too_ many stars sparkling in the nighttime sky, make dinner, say the dishes will get washed tomorrow morning even though they definitely won’t be, fall asleep surrounded by even more paperwork, and then wake up and start the whole thing all over again. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, just like the instructions on her pathetically cheap bottle of strawberry-scented shampoo.

Good lord, Sakura wanted a cigarette just then, staring out her window deep into that cruel and unblinking eye of the moon.

“Mama?”

Sakura flinched half out of her skin, surprised to hear a tiny voice inside her achingly empty bedroom.

“Yes, Sarada?”

Sarada stood in Sakura’s half-open doorway, dressed in the oversized black sweatshirt she liked to sleep in, a long black tangle of black hair covering most of her face. The hallway light peeked in through the corner of the little girl’s glasses and Sakura could see that they were foggy with tears and the heat of Sarada’s tears. Sakura’s chest tightened and her shoulders sagged. She had thought, just maybe, that it wouldn’t have been this way this year, but here they were again, two girls in a dark room, crying over a boy.

Sakura pushed her hip off of the window she had been staring out of and slowly wandered over to the door, feeling as tired and broken inside as her daughter looked. Sarada shouldered the door open the rest of the way and toppled into Sakura’s arms, sobbing. Sakura picked her daughter up easily, cradling the nine-year-old in her arms as best as she could manage. She hummed softly as she brought Sarada over to her bed, settling Sarada down onto the mattress. Sakura sat down next to her and wrapped both arms around her trembling shoulders.

“Mama, why won’t he…just…come home?” Sarada asked, her words punctuated by hiccups and sniffles more often than not.

“I don’t know, baby, but wherever he is, I know he’s thinking of you,” Sakura said soothingly as she stroked her fingers lightly through Sarada’s hair.

“I don’t think he even knows,” Sarada said. Her voice was clipped, sharper and angrier now than it had been before.

“Oh, Sarada, I’m sure he does-“

“Did even send you anything for _your_ birthday?”

Sakura had nothing to say to that, a sharp intake of air hissing past her teeth. Sarada’s question landed square in Sakura’s gut, knocking all of the air from her body.

The answer was no, no he hadn’t. Three days since her thirty-first birthday and nothing, not a single word from the man whose last name she now paraded in like an ill-fitting costume. And now it was Sarada’s birthday that had come and gone with more of the same, silence, and Sasuke was nothing but a cold ghost that wandered in the never-ending hallways of their home, unseen, unheard, unfelt. Sarada started crying again when one minute, and then two, passed without Sakura saying anything. All she could do was hold her daughter in her arms as Sarada sobbed, until the girl finally fell asleep. Sakura laid there, unmoving, watching the clock at her bedside _tick-tock_ closer to April 1st with every passing moment.

It was like that every year. Sarada and Sakura knowing to expect nothing but silence but still hoping against hope for something, anything, even just a card to acknowledge that he cared they even existed. Something to please, god, please make it feel like they were the family they were supposed to be, and not dead, errant leaves whirling past each other in the wind.

But it just…never came.


End file.
